


shipping it

by Mizzy



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crack Treated Seriously, Eliot Waugh's Brain Is A Special Place, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Getting Back Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Mental Anguish, Misunderstandings, Non-Consensual Touching, Prince Fomar being a Problem, S0405 used as past canon, Trauma, how do you tag, there was only one boat, time travel angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:14:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22590811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy
Summary: Season 3 Canon AU.Quentin needs to head off to search for the Abyss key, but the Muntjac is misbehaving. Eliot thinks he can help, except, the Muntjac keeps pushing them together. Literally. What on Fillory are you supposed to do when your living ship…. ships you?
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 42
Kudos: 303





	shipping it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snoopypez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoopypez/gifts).



> I believe that I'm allowed to blame snoopypez for this.
> 
> This fic branches (heh) off from just after Season 3 Episode 5, our beloved A Life in the Day. Be prepared for the threat levels of that era in canon--Margo is still fending off her child groom, and the Fairy Queen wants to extract some of Eliot's.... particulars, if he doesn't help the wedding be consummated. Eliot is not in a good headspace after the memory dump in ALITD; please do not read if that's going to cause you discomfort. <3 This is mostly just crack though. :D

Eliot Waugh could easily state, hand on his heart, that having his brooding interrupted was in his top five pet peeves. On a list that included stickers on fruit, polyester socks, and online stores that charged for shipping, Eliot felt like it said a lot that it was a strong contender for number one most disliked thing.

Normally he would be gearing up to deliver a spectacular rant about it, fueled by the utter migraine that was his life, except he recognized the interrupter's voice; ranting at Quentin Coldwater was usually a useless endeavor, because he could rant _circles_ around Eliot, and it usually just degenerated into them both getting ass-faced on whatever passed for the best alcohol in the vicinity, which in Fillory was...a sorry decision on a _good_ day.

"I'm, uh, pretty sure you wouldn't be able to stare a hole through that wall even if magic _was_ turned on," Quentin said.

All the energy that Eliot might have expended into a pretty diatribe about interrupting his creative process was suddenly and firmly focused elsewhere. Mostly on holding himself together. Quentin was supposed to be in the middle of nowhere right about now, having a jolly sailing adventure, and forgetting about Eliot completely.

"Bold of you to say that with such conviction," Eliot said, summoning enough composure to shift his gaze to Quentin's face.

Oof, but that was a bad idea. The piecemeal flashes of memory of the mosaic were too fresh, too damn _shiny_ in his head. All he could see for a moment was how pink and kissable Quentin's mouth was; how strong Quentin's arms were from years of stubbornly manipulating those fucking tiles; how warm Eliot's chest had felt, bursting with emotion for Quentin, for his son, for their tiny little home in the woods.

"Uh," Quentin said. "I suppose."

Eliot inhaled and exhaled slowly as he considered how to react to Quentin's unexpected presence in his planned hour of melancholia. He'd had the experience of playing multiple roles before: until he'd fully perfected the excellent, grand, modern-version of _Eliot Waugh,_ he'd had to play-act as a hundred different editions of himself; imperfect ones, ones which didn't fit well enough; many that were imperceptibly different to the casual observer. He reached for one of those—a colder, more cutting version, too heavy on the sarcasm. No wonder he'd taken so fluidly to fixing drinks in the Cottage; he'd already spent years as a mixologist in his own brain.

"Weren't you supposed to be off embracing your inner Kate Winslet?"

Quentin pressed his mouth into a line and nodded at the wall. "Margo still in lockdown?"

Eliot matched his frown. "Do you see her and I sipping cocktails and making witty and dark commentary on the world as it rolls by?"

Quentin narrowed his eyes and Eliot remembered, with an accompanying sinking feeling in his gut, that Quentin had experienced the same patchwork montage of scenes as he had. And unfortunately, among that flick book of a relentlessly domestic alternate timeline, there had been a rather substantial amount of Eliot being… well… _Eliot._ Quentin knew things now about Eliot that he'd never known before. He knew that when Eliot was being a vulnerable motherfucker, he lashed out when he was hurt. Quentin knew you could hurt Eliot more easily than most people knew.

It wasn't like Quentin _couldn't_ be a little shit—Eliot had a few more volumes of knowledge about that himself—but, for the most part, Quentin was usually nicer to Eliot than Eliot deserved. And he showed that kindness now.

"The Muntjac's misbehaving," Quentin said.

Eliot straightened up from his slouch; it was probably bad for his back to sit like that for too long anyway. "Why?"

Quentin threw up his arms in the air, Quentinish for _if I knew I'd have said in the first place, asshole._ Eliot hadn't needed a whole other life in an alternate timeline to be able to start to understand Quentin Coldwater; he'd cataloged Quentin's awkward body language and gestures long before that.

" _How,_ " Eliot amended.

"No matter what we try, she's just refusing to set sail." Quentin shook his head. "When we tried physically pushing her out to sea, a lot of the crew ended up half-drowned. She _drop-kicked_ Benedict onto the beach."

" _Dropkicked._ "

"Well, some of the decking just propelled him butt-first onto the sand." Quentin made another complex Quentinish gesture with his hands, which Eliot translated to mean _much slapstick, actually quite funny, Quentin probably laughed and Benedict probably has Quentin in his personal doghouse again._

"You're a King here, Quentin; no matter how we're keeping that on the down-low, the Fillorians know the truth," Eliot said, aiming for a gentle tone because sometimes you had to catch a Coldwater with honey, not vinegar, "you don't need additional permission to take a different ship. Just find another one; our fleet is vast." He added a weak hand gesture of his own, meant to be an easy dismissal; as far as he was concerned, case closed, not his problem anymore. He had to fight to keep his eyes open; he wanted to shutter them, pretend Quentin wasn't there. He wanted to keep on pretending that even seeing Quentin wasn't painful.

It wasn't fair. Eliot had just been protecting both of them from the inevitable agony that would have followed, had they tried to make a genuine go of things here, in the real world. The mosaic was a beautiful set of memories, but that was where they should remain, beautiful and whole. Where Eliot couldn't wreck them. Somehow he hadn't made a mess in that timeline. He couldn't be so lucky _twice._

Quentin was better far off away from him. No matter what he might think.

"The Muntjac is one of the only ones that can handle deep waters, and I planned to head for the Abyss, remember?" Quentin folded his arms. "I think the _deep waters_ part is fully implied in the name."

"Didn't the Captain know how to fix it?" Eliot said. Well, he might have snapped it; Quentin looked wounded enough for that to be true.

"He thinks—uh—well, it's complicated." Quentin's mouth wobbled like he knew what to say and he didn't want to say it.

"C'mon, just spit it out," Eliot sighed.

"The Captain thinks it's because of the royal wedding."

"How on Fillory is Margo's wedding making a ship _dropkick our resident mapmaker_?"

"Wait, what the fuck is going on?" Margo's voice floated in to interrupt.

Quentin visibly startled, nearly knocking his ridiculous hat off in the motion. "Margo?"

"Ah, the dulcet tones of our darling Q," Margo said, sweet, "what the _fuck_ are you doing here and yet not _getting me the hell out of here?_ "

" _This_ is why I'm sitting here," Eliot said, gesturing at the vent in the stonework that Quentin had obviously not noticed, given how he was staring at it now. "The vent goes right through to the dungeons. Too small for an escape, but...sound can escape, at least."

"At the very motherfucking least," Margo snarked.

"I guess I thought you were here because our, uh… special guests… were taking up the throne room," Quentin said.

Eliot raised his eyebrows. "And that explains to you why I'm sat in a drafty hallway, and not somewhere comfortable? "

"Well, okay, no," Quentin muttered.

"My lovely husband sleeps like a log once he's asleep," Margo hissed through the vent. "But hurry. I need adult interaction before my brain leaks right out of my _skull_. I heard something about the ship. _Explain._ "

Quentin knelt by the vent, which gave Eliot a lot of feelings he didn't want to have. "Uh, so I was trying to set sail to find the next key, which I _think_ is somewhere in the Abyss, but the Muntjac is malfunctioning and refusing to set sail. The Captain thinks it's because of your royal wedding. Apparently, previously, whenever a Child of Earth married a local, they...were supposed to consummate the marriage _outside_ Fillory, the idea being that they would leave Fillorian waters as two, and return as one flesh."

"But Fen and I didn't—" Eliot started.

Quentin winced. "The people accepted it back then because they were just relieved to have royalty on the throne at all, but—well—When you and your wife didn't follow the superstition, I mean, _magic died._ And the Floating Island fell, and the coffers emptied—the people...aren't trying to blame _you_ for this, of course."

"Of course," Eliot said, vaguely.

"But the Captain thinks that the Muntjac isn't willing to risk it. He thinks she's refusing to set sail again until the marriage is consummated outside Fillorian waters. Apparently, there's precedent." Quentin pulled a face, even though Margo couldn't see it. "The Captain gave me an idea of where we could find that precedent in the royal library—"

"Then _go find it,_ " Margo hissed. "Eliot, you promised to get me out of here. If I'm on a boat, that gives us more time to figure out how to get out of this shit. If I stay in here any longer I'm screwed. _Literally._ "

"I'll meet you back here when I find it," Quentin said, and took off in the direction of the library.

Eliot tried not to sigh after him. He turned back to the vent. "Okay, Bambi, assuming the Captain isn't full of shit, help me figure out how to persuade her unfairness to let us take a little boat trip."

"A speech, I guess," Margo sighed. "Well, we're fucking awesome at words."

Eliot placed his hand on the vent. "We _will_ get you out of there."

"You'd better," Margo said in a low voice.

Eliot smiled sadly; that was Margoish for _thank you._

He only hoped he could earn her thanks for real, somehow.

* * *

"To what unpleasant drivel do I owe this visit to?" the Fairy Queen asked, glaring at him suspiciously.

There was something about the Fairy Queen that made Eliot's skin crawl. He had to fight hard not to shudder. It was probably her ability to flay you alive and enjoy it. That sort of thing made certain creatures unavoidably terrifying.

"We've been having problems with the royal boat, your, uh, Fairy-ness," Eliot said. "The Muntjac?"

The Fairy Queen stared at Eliot, then eyeballed the small cage she swung from a single finger. Eliot tried not to swallow too visibly and he plastered a fake smile on his face.

"If this doesn't have a point related to our current situation…" The Fairy Queen trailed off.

Eliot gulped. Villains shouldn't be allowed to leave creepy sentences open like that. "It does. Sort of."

The Fairy Queen took hold of the cage with both hands, staring at him meaningfully.

"When a Child of Earth marries someone of _this_ world," Eliot said, swiftly reciting the speech Margo had helped him come up with, "tradition states that after the wedding they travel on the royal boat to an island just outside of Fillory's waters, in order from them to cross the threshold back to Fillory as a _truly_ united couple. The Muntjac seems to be aware another royal wedding has occurred and her refusal to set sail seems linked to that. I came to request Queen Margo and Prince Fomar be moved to the Muntjac as soon as possible. It would be easier for me to be able to...encourage the union in a limited space, where I can have access to the royal couple, and if we're on a boat...there are very few ways to escape."

" _You_ managed to, once," the Fairy Queen said.

"Yes, but that was an exception and I don't have that method any longer, it's back on Earth." Eliot pulled out the scroll that Quentin had managed to find. "We have documentation on periods of time when the royal ship has refused to sail before, and each time, history occurs the same: on these occasions, ensuring the following wedding was consummated off Fillorian waters was the only way to make the ship useful again, _plus_ it avoided a peasant revolution, which would be _entirely_ unpleasant for all of us, don't you agree?"

Ember and Umber, Eliot wasn't going to escape this room with his personage intact. This was a massive mistake. He wondered if there was any point in running, or how far he would get, at least, if he started running right that second.

Then he realized the scroll was no longer in his hands, but in the Fairy Queen's.

"Hmm." She unfurled the paper and looked at it, disgruntled. "Well. I suppose we should be grateful the Stone Queen's efforts for consummation have been so far unsuccessful." The Fairy Queen dropped the scroll to one side carelessly and clapped her hands.

Eliot tilted his head; barely a second later, the Stone Queen swept in through the main doors, followed by a pack of her spear-bearers.

"Ah, come in," the Fairy Queen said. Eliot folded his hands behind his back and shuffled his weight awkwardly. "High King Eliot has a proposition for us."

Of _course,_ Eliot was going to have to pitch this whole thing _again._ He felt faint, but… this was precisely the kind of torture the Fairy Queen adored. She had no reason to know Eliot was used to it; Professor Schiff often made them deliver ten-minute presentations on nonsense topics in his Ancient Language classes, forcing his students to repeat their speeches over and over in different languages until they were word-perfect.

Eliot turned his fixed smile directly to the Stone Queen. "One of my Guards has broken the news to me that our royal ship, the Muntjac, is behaving… oddly. My people believe that union with my _darling_ wife Fen was… unluckily done. Fillorians are a deeply superstitious people, and normally I don't hold to that sort of thing, but nobody can deny it—after Fen and I wed without holding to the typical consummation ceremony, the world lost magic. My people are becoming quite restless, and my Captain thinks that's directly related to why the royal ship is misbehaving. So I've come to request your permission— _both_ of your permissions—to take Queen Margo and Prince Fomar to the Muntjac, to see if that improves the situation. We plan to sail out to non-Fillorian waters and refuse to sail back until the deed is, uh, done."

The Stone Queen's face hadn't changed at all during Eliot's brief speech.

"Your Muntjac—it's a deer-class ship with a Heartwood, am I correct?" the Stone Queen asked, after a long pause.

"Yes."

"Then we're amenable to the plan." The Stone Queen smiled. "Goodness knows my people are quite superstitious too. The Heartwood's response to a royal union will doubly satisfy them, since they'll be able to see it themselves."

Eliot tilted his head. "I feel like I'm missing something important here."

"Oh, you must feel that way your entire pathetic existence, I'd imagine," the Fairy Queen said.

Eliot resisted the urge to try and punch her in the face. He'd be unsuccessful and probably grossly mauled too somehow to add to the indignity, if he tried.

"Everyone knows that the Heartwood on royal ships responds to their royalty consummating their relationships," the Stone Queen smiled at Eliot widely. "The whole _ship_ will know when my son and his bride have finally become one flesh. Honestly, we should have thought about it sooner. Locking them in a cell gives us no proof at all of a done deed and this will."

"Uh," Eliot said. "Right."

The Fairy Queen beamed, probably at Eliot's obvious distress. "Then it's agreed. We'll meet at the docks in an hour."

Eliot rallied with another fake smile and bowed low to her and the Stone Queen, before scurrying away to break the news to Margo.

The Heartwood...would somehow _show_ them that Margo and Fomar had done the deed? Shit. _Shit._ Margo was so screwed. Maybe she at least could get _some_ satisfaction beforehand by killing Quentin and Eliot with her bare hands for landing her in this new horrifying situation?

* * *

"It's true," Tick said, his mustache twitching as he jogged. Eliot had set the pace to the docks and no one could easily keep up with his walking speed. Tick's breathing was a wheezing rattle. The Floating Island delegation was a distance behind them now, occasionally hollering; all the noise did was make Eliot's stride even longer. "Any ship with a Heartwood visibly shows signs of its owners enjoying, uh, a special liaison. As the Muntjac is the royal ship, you are her owners. She'll blossom like a flower if the marriage is consummated within her wooden walls!"

"I'm just glad to be out of that cell," Margo admitted. "One problem at a time. Benedict, you sure you can plot a course that will...be appropriately scenic?"

Benedict nodded. "Seven days until your union will be able to take place."

"Good," Margo said. "That'll give us plenty of time to plan."

"Assuming that the ship is going to set sail and not, uh, injure one of us," Benedict added, looking downcast.

"I'll go on board first this time," Quentin promised him. "If anyone's going to end up with their ass in the air, I suppose it's my turn."

"Attaboy, Coldwater," Margo approved, her voice strident because she had _years_ of cardio practice trying to keep up with Eliot and his giraffe legs. "Taking one for the team. _Nice._ "

"It was good thinking to connect the Muntjac's refusal to sail and our Queen's current circumstances with our superstitious side, King Quentin," Tick complimented.

Quentin pulled a face at him; talking really _was_ difficult as Eliot whisked them along the path to the docks.

"Who's King Quentin? I'm just a regular Fillorian guard," Quentin reminded Tick.

Tick grimaced. They'd decided to maintain the illusion that Quentin was nothing but a Guard for now. Even if the Fairy Queen didn't know what King Quentin looked like, and thus might not connect Quentin in this outlandish garb to the truth, Tick had already told Eliot what had happened to Gillen; she was not above using random Fillorians to underline her menace. Still, it was probably safer than the Fairy Queen knowing she had another royal around to use as a pawn in her terrifying games.

"It was the Captain's knowledge, really; I was just the right person to hear it," Quentin said, always one to try and soothe over someone's visible distress. Eliot rolled his eyes; Quentin was your typical kid of a divorce. "Right place, right time."

"Yeah, but you had to make the connection that it was important and not just Fillorian waffle for _I don't know what's gone wrong,_ " Margo said. "I do appreciate getting out of that damn cell." She eyeballed Eliot. "It's much more progress than _some_ people were making."

"Let me guess, though, there's a whole chapter on Fillorian superstitions in those books of yours," Eliot said. "How Martin Chatwin ate an unlucky talking bush and vomited rainbows for a week."

Quentin shook his head. "Not in the books. I just remembered what happened, _you_ remember, at the Harvest Red Bear Festival? When you moved those bones and nearly caused a village riot—"

"Oh, god," Eliot winced, suddenly and viscerally able to remember the shouting that had occurred, "yeah, okay, good catch."

"What to the _what_ now?" Margo demanded.

Eliot nearly tripped over his own feet when he realized with a thump that goddammit, that hadn't been a _real_ memory, that was one of those stupid mosaic fragments, _shit._

Thinking of it was like fucking whiplash; he could taste the spiced honey pies that Balderdash made on the back of his tongue; he could smell the flowers that Atreyu and Engywook wove around every tree near the lake; he could _hear_ Ted's laughter as the local boys danced half-naked around a ribbon-bedecked pole. Ted had been too young to join in, but next time, Quentin promised, with a smile that reached his eyes, _next time, kiddo_ —

Eliot couldn't remember the next time. Because that's what the mosaic was. A handful of jagged pieces from a thousand-piece jigsaw that had the majority of its pieces missing. He wondered if Ted got to join in the dance. He wondered how many hours it took him to teach their gravity-challenged son those complicated steps. Eliot's eyes stung. Ted grew up. Ted grew up, got married, and had kids of his own. From the pieces of that timeline in his head, Eliot knew that Ted had a happy life. Eliot had for some reason managed to defy all possible laws of logic to somehow become a good father. Maybe it had been Quentin's influence, but he'd been a fucking _awesome_ father.

So of course it had all been some sort of—magical hiccup. A shared fragmentary psychosis. It couldn't be _real_ because it could literally never be possible: Eliot wasn't a good man. He could never be a good father. The mosaic was just...an exception to the rule. It wasn't like Quentin would have picked Eliot out of a line-up, if he'd had a choice; Eliot had been _there_ , that was all. Quentin was better as a friend, at arm's distance, so when Eliot finally self-imploded, he would only be injured by the fallout and not completely obliterated.

"I _still_ wanna hear about these bones," Margo hissed; even she was breathing a little hard. Perhaps Eliot was stomping along the path too fast. He slowed down and pretended he didn't hear Tick swear loudly and thank Umber for his life.

"Fillorians are _really_ superstitious," Quentin said, starting to ramble, such a pro at it that it didn't matter that Eliot was still racing them to the docks like they could maybe outrun the Stone Queen, "even if I hadn't known _how_ much, I'd have wanted to research the Captain's words anyway, with such a magic-soaked environment, we don't know how many of their superstitions are—are rooted in magical realities we can't comprehend, or were just, y'know, like Uncle Franny making shit up because he can't be bothered to climb out of his hammock, so he invented wild stories so he could lie where he was."

"Uncle _Fanny,_ " Eliot said.

Quentin shot him a dark look. "You're such a child."

Eliot shrugged. "I'd be wounded but it's accurate. Ah, the Captain. I'll let him know what's going on."

Eliot spared his friends a glance before engaging with the Captain. Quentin blinked and staggered to a halt, resting his hands on his knees; he obviously hadn't noticed that they'd reached the docks already. Tick sank to the ground; he might have been crying a little. Apart from Eliot, Benedict was the only one not breathing hard; he probably got enough cardio running around to make his maps, or maybe he just had the lungs of an actual ox; this was Fillory, nothing was impossible.

The whole crew of the Muntjac was gathered on the docks, staring warily at the ship; as Eliot got closer, lights all over the ship flickered on and the Captain beamed at him. Eliot explained the situation and the Captain didn't even hesitate, confidently leaping onto the ship and getting the crew to follow him. Maybe Quentin had been talking out of his ass; the Muntjac didn't seem to be misbehaving at all.

Eliot beckoned the others over to join him, keeping a weather eye on the approaching No-Longer-Floating Island delegation. Prince Fomar was being bridal-carried by two of the spear warriors. Eliot wondered whether they might even be able to set sail and "accidentally" leave the Stone Queen and Prince Fomar behind for a while, but that would be leaving Fillory under their influence, and that didn't bear thinking about.

"It's weird, y'know," Tick muttered, as Benedict helped him back to his feet, "the Harvest Red Bear festival hasn't happened in Fillory for a hundred years."

"Huh," Margo said, "that's kinda weird."

Quentin abruptly turned his face away and started toward the Muntjac, eyeing the ship warily. Eliot grimaced and copied him, so Margo couldn't see his guilty expression and press for more details.

* * *

Eliot wasn't quite sure what happened after that.

Chaos.

It was absolute chaos.

Tick and Quentin hurriedly tried to unroll a red carpet for the Stone Queen when she finally caught up to them, which made her smile faintly. Tick extended a hand to help Margo onto the Muntjac first; she kept her head tilted up to mask her panic at the idea of being trapped back on the boat, only this time with an amorous child pawing at her. Eliot was always in a mixed-state of pride and worry over that hard glossy armor of hers. Then it was time for Fomar to step onto the boat, and—

That was when the Muntjac just _lost it._

One moment Eliot was on his feet, and the next he was tumbling ass over heels; he managed to stretch out a hand and catch Margo's waist in a flurry of material, and they were being drenched in seawater as the Muntjac just set loose, careening toward open water at full speed. Eliot caught glimpse of Prince Fomar tumbling off the ramp and into the sea; the Stone Queen was screaming, her face reddening in her anger; all her spear-warriors threw themselves in the water after him.

Eliot laughed out loud; they'd pay for it, and have to return to pick them up, but there was something so _delightful_ about these happenings. Quentin was right about the ship acting up, and Eliot _adored_ it.

But of course, things couldn't be that easy.

Magic was dead in Fillory, but their problem was fucking fairies, and fairy magic still worked, dammit.

One moment, Eliot, Margo, Tick, Benedict, and Quentin were alone with the Muntjac's crew on the deck, laughing together over their sudden freedom, and the next, the Fairy Queen was standing there, looking displeased, and the delegation from the Once-Floating-Island was behind her on the deck, soaked and shuddering but there, grimacing at Eliot and Margo.

Margo forced a fake smile. "Oh, you made it! Nice. We were so _worried._ "

"Your boat is rather inconsiderately rude," the Fairy Queen sniffed. "I'm tempted to carve its Heartwood from its core myself."

Eliot plastered a smile on his face that was the exact opposite of what he felt. He eyed the Fairy Queen's cage again and resisted the urge to cross his legs.

Fomar, drenched and sopping wet, slid across the deck to paw at Margo's arm and stare at her adoringly. Margo shuddered. Quentin was grimacing. Tick and Benedict were already creeping backward, trying to pretend they didn't exist. The Fairy Queen smiled, enjoying their discomfort.

Eliot clapped his hands to get everyone's attention. "Let's get our guests settled into quarters while they're here, people. Now the Muntjac's...reluctance to sail has obviously—" he wiggled his fingers, "—evaporated, non-Fillorian waters are a few days away. So let's make you as comfortable as we can for now, yes?"

The Non-Floating Islanders stared at him rudely, still dripping onto the main deck. Eliot could feel his smile fossilizing into a grimace.

Eliot took a step back, meaning to lead the way, and then… he wobbled.

This was a disturbing life event for him. Eliot made it a _point_ to never wobble. Ever. Wobbling was ungainly. Gentlemen _never_ wobbled. But there he was, wobbling, and worse, in front of a _crowd_. He looked down to see what was betraying him; a board on the deck had suddenly come loose. He held out an arm to stop himself, only to find himself thumping against something warm and solid.

It was Quentin's capable hands holding him up. Eliot became keenly aware that wobbling was an understatement; he'd fallen, and Quentin was the only thing keeping Eliot up and on his feet. Eliot gasped for air, the breath knocked out of him by the sudden drop, and he stared at Quentin nonplussed.

Eliot knew every inch of Quentin's face; he knew how good Quentin's embrace was. He might not have every single one of his memories from the mosaic, but enough had survived that he knew _exquisitely_ what kind of physical joy the two could make, just with their bodies. If Eliot closed his eyes, he could picture Quentin, naked in the moonlight, laughing with Eliot as they moved together in that ageless, perfect rhythm…

"Whoa, there," Quentin said, softly, kindly. The kindness burned more than anything else.

"I'm not a fucking horse, Quentin," Eliot hissed, yanking himself away and smoothing his robes down.

Hurt flashed across Quentin's face; for a moment he looked like he was going to shout back, but then he seemed to remember he was supposed to be pretending to be a regular Guard, and he lowered his gaze. "Sorry, Your Majesty," he mumbled.

And now Eliot felt like _shit,_ because causing Quentin any kind of pain was like kicking a fucking puppy. It was just too easy to hurt him.

Eliot hated feeling bad. It improbably made him act even shittier, though. Logic would state that he should act better, in order to avoid hurting anyone, but logic could go fuck itself in the ass with one of the biting eels that swam around these parts.

"How about you go below decks and see that we have enough provisions for our guests, _Guard_ Quentin," Eliot hissed.

"Gladly, sire," Quentin muttered, fire in his eyes for a brief second before he bowed his head and scurried off. Even Margo was eyeballing him in horror, which shouldn't have been so effective now she was down to just the one eye, but somehow, also improbably, it made her glare even _more_ expressive.

"This place is a death trap," the Stone Queen hissed. "I feel like we have been _much_ misled about the resources Fillory has at its disposal if this is your _best ship._ "

"The Muntjac's just reacting to the new unstable union, my lady," Tick said, actually being fucking useful for once. "I'm sure once the union is, uh, formalized, everything will be _much_ steadier."

"Hm." The Stone Queen looked over to the Fairy Queen, and then over at Margo. "A few days of hiccups are worth it for a lifetime of stability, I suppose."

"Excellent," Margo said, obviously struggling to find anything nice to say at all.

Eliot empathized.

* * *

With the Fairy Queen sequestered in the main cabin, and the Stone Queen and her delegates taking the next two biggest ones, and all of them _insisting_ Margo and Fomar share the last full-sized cabin, Eliot was going to have to bunk up on the lower-decks with the rest of the crew. Added to the fact that he still had to find a way to save his best friend from making Fomar the Lolita to her grouchy-yet-glamorous Humbert Humbert, and the salt in the sea-air did _nothing_ good to his hair, _and_ Quentin was on board this ship with him when the plan had been for Quentin to be _very_ elsewhere….

Well, to put it simply, Eliot was in a mood. He thought he was doing pretty well, considering he'd only contemplating setting the Muntjac on fire three times so far. Especially considering he hadn't acted on the impulse.

Maybe, Eliot thought sourly, he should say he was _not_ in the mood.

At least he could settle down with Margo for a while before bedtime; he'd been missing his Margo time for the last three days. They could have some wine, whine about being boned; it would be just like the good old days.

Except, even _that_ was ruined.

"My Queen," Fomar said, smiling down at Margo mere _moments_ after Eliot had managed to steal her away for himself. Eliot glared at the brat; his mother wasn't around, so he didn't bother to temper his dislike. "Seeing as we cannot consummate our relationship yet, I was hoping for another of your goodnight tales."

Eliot raised his eyebrows, annoyed that he was surprised; of _course_ Margo had already attempted to Scheherazade herself out of her situation.

"Hope away, bucko," Margo said, folding her arms.

Fomar's mouth fell. "Well. Maybe I can go fetch mother and tell her of your behavior."

"You can cry to mommy all you want, sunshine," Margo shrugged.

Fomar sighed dramatically. "Then I suppose I must stay awake and sit by your side all night, admiring your fair countenance…"

Margo puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. "Fine. Whatever, c'mon, Fomo, let's get you all tucked in and cozy." She swept up her skirts as Fomar's round face brightened. "You'd better figure this out, numbnuts," she hissed to Eliot as she left, her new husband following her, throwing Eliot a thumbs-up as he passed.

Eliot resisted the urge to vomit. This was ridiculous. He needed a plan. He settled back and looked at the Heartwood, the warm light pulsing softly, and he pulled a face at it. For some reason, he wanted to blame the ship for sticking them in this current iteration of circumstances, but he knew that was a churlish impulse.

Well, with Margo elsewhere for the moment, Eliot could spend some valuable thinking time about what to do next. Perhaps there would be a good island on the way that might hold a solution; he'd have to get Benedict to check his maps. Maybe a walk around the ship would help him clear his thoughts to focus on the task.

Tick had rambled about some of the weirdest sights in Fillory's oceans during their last voyage. The further you got from the shore, the more magic had gone wild: there was an island where the people were really ocean waves; a train that ran underneath the ocean that you could never board; a strange smooth area known as the Doldrums where raiders picked endlessly through an ocean gyre, a swirl of flotsam stuffed with everything people had forgotten about in their lives. Maybe they could go there so Eliot could retrieve the sanity he'd lost _years_ ago.

Eliot wasn't paying attention to his surroundings as he walked; he knew the Muntjac's generous internal layout well now and didn't need to concentrate. Except he probably should have been paying attention, because something knocked into him, hard enough to wind. He raised his hands to start doing a spell in retaliation before he remembered that all the fucking magic was gone. Eliot opened his mouth to start shouting, but the object that had collided into him was swearing noisily, stealing everything Eliot had planned to say.

"Okay, what the actual _fuck, who pushed me?_ " Quentin yelped, shoving himself away from Eliot and looking horrified.

Eliot stared at Quentin suspiciously, struggling to regain his breath. "Are you _that_ desperate to throw yourself at me?"

Quentin stopped cursing and stared at him in slack horror. "I didn't crash into you on fucking _purpose,_ Eliot!"

Eliot made a show of looking around the empty wooden hallway. "There's no one around, _Quentin._ "

Quentin stumbled back even further, pressing back against one of the wooden walls. "I swear something pushed me!"

"Yeah?" Eliot waved his arms around. "You see anyone around?"

"I said some _thing._ "

"Oh, like, magic. In a world _without magic._ "

"If I knew what pushed me, I'd say," Quentin's voice was low, gritty. "I don't know. Maybe it's the goddamned ship itself?"

"What?"

"I think," Quentin said, impatiently, "that, for some bizarre reason, the ship is trying to physically shove us together."

"The ship," Eliot repeated. "You think the ship shoved you. Like a kindergartner in a playground."

"It makes sense! I told you it was acting up!" Quentin gesticulated wildly, Quentinish for _I have had a eureka moment and it doesn't matter how nuts it sounds, it's got to be right._ "That's what happened on the deck; the board moved on its own, like it did before to hurt Benedict. And she's a living ship, it makes sense that she has her own agenda."

Eliot stared at him. Quentin looking at him like that, all earnest and open, was severely damaging what little calm he had left. "Look, Q, if _you_ need to make up a justification as to why you have to touch me at weird times, tha _t's your_ damage, but you have to get over this idea—"

"I'm not—there's nothing _to_ get over," Quentin hissed which, ow, that hurt more than it should have. "I'm not fucking doing anything, I was just walking down the hallway and _bam._ "

"Oh, right, okay," Eliot said, "let's try that. Look at me! Walking down a hallway, no one but you in view, and I'm— _ouch, motherfucker!_ " Pain blossomed through him; he'd walked straight into a pillar, somehow? "What the fuck?" Eliot glared at the thick wooden pillar that rose from the floor to the ceiling. Had it been there all along? He side-stepped it, eyeballing it suspiciously.

"See what I mean?" Quentin jabbed his finger in the direction of the pillar. "That wasn't there a second ago."

"Well," Eliot said, poking it dubiously, "maybe we just didn't see it because the wood is the same color as the walls and floor."

"Maybe we just— _Eliot._ I don't know why I even bother, sometimes." Quentin huffed under his breath noisily.

Eliot blistered at Quentin's words; why _did_ he ever bother with Eliot? No one did, save for Margo, not for very long. _But Quentin stayed with you fifty years,_ his brain taunted. _He could have left you any time and he didn't._ Eliot told his brain to fuck off: that was an aberration. A timeline that didn't even fucking happen, dammit. It shouldn't count.

"I'm sure we just imagined it," Eliot said, firmly, and tried to turn to leave. Only for a branch to suddenly curl out of nowhere, sliding up from the decking slowly before forcibly shoving Eliot, sending him staggering toward Quentin.

Quentin yelped and tried to step back, to let Eliot fall on his face, which was probably exactly what Eliot deserved. But a door behind Quentin flew open, stopping his retreat, and Eliot ended up, once again, in Quentin's arms.

"Uh," Eliot said. Quentin untangled himself as quickly as possible, his face red. "Well, maybe it's a coincidence?"

The ship rocked, sending Quentin and Eliot sprawling together again.

Quentin threw his bitchiest look at Eliot. "You were saying?"

"As I was saying," Eliot said, slowly, "I think that, for some bizarre reason, the ship is trying to physically shove us together."

Quentin's glare in response to that really was quite beautiful.

* * *

They came up with some ground rules. Well, there was a gallant attempt to come up with ground rules, namely, Quentin would stay at the aft of the ship and Eliot would stay at the fore, and if they used the two different trapdoors to get up to the deck, then they wouldn't be close enough for the ship to shove them together.

It worked for the following day. There was plenty for Quentin to do on deck, and Eliot stayed at Margo's side, running interference when Fomar tried the handsy approach to get what he wanted. But then the ship started to get sneakier, and there were times of the following days that they just couldn't stay far enough apart.

During dinner, Eliot sat on one of the low dining benches in the mess, and the ship tipped the bench up, skidding him to the end where Quentin had just sat down.

Quentin was busy with his masquerade as Guard and had been co-opted to help change the bedsheets in the main chambers; Eliot was fetching Margo a shawl so that Fomar would stop pawing at her bare arms. He turned around, and the ship slammed Eliot and Quentin onto the bed that Quentin was trying to make up. When they scooted apart, breathing hard and staring at each other, the ship _rolled,_ tipping them to the middle of the mattress.

Another time, Eliot was on-deck with Benedict, pointing out the (imaginary) dangers in the waters straight ahead of them to the Stone Queen, explaining their deviation in route was necessary to avoid large rocks ripping the bottom of the boat, when he stepped on a section of decking that abruptly disappeared. Sending him plummeting down directly into Quentin's arms.

It didn't matter _where_ Eliot went on the Muntjac; if he came even close enough to Quentin, the ship would do _something_ to knock them together. New branches appeared from between boards and disappeared. Sections of floors just vanished. They couldn't even walk down the same hallway without one of them being shoved into the other's arms; the ship was growing less and less discreet about it, too.

Quentin lost it before Eliot did; that rang true to their patience levels, at least. Eliot had been sent by the Fairy Queen to scrape a certain kind of seaweed from the side of the ship that her kind liked; he hadn't seen Quentin, so he thought he was safe, but apparently Quentin was up the mast, fixing a frayed knot, and, well, the usual happened, and now Quentin was trying to remove himself from Eliot's arms on the main deck, where some of the rigging had looped around and somehow partially tied them together.

"Oh my god," Eliot couldn't even facepalm; somehow his wrists had gotten looped up in the rope too. He tried to wriggle but it only served to knock Quentin into him more forcibly. "Get away from me."

"I'm _trying,_ " Quentin hissed.

Eliot was fed up; getting hog-tied even by apparent "accident" was giving him uncomfortable flashbacks of what his brothers had thought constituted humor when he was a kid. "Really?"

" _Yes_ , really," Quentin snarked, trying to find the end of the rope. "You've made it perfectly clear how little you want me around. I have been _trying_ to stay away from you, to honor what _you_ wanted. This isn't my fucking fault."

Eliot felt weird hearing Quentin spit those words at him. He didn't know what to do, other than gape uselessly.

"There, got it," Quentin yelled, yanking the rope away from himself and sending Eliot a brief withering stare before stumbling away. "And you know what else? I'm done. I'm _done._ "

Eliot was still half-trapped in the rope; Benedict and Tick had to hurry over and help untie the frankly ridiculously complicated knot that had caught him. "What do you think you're going to do? Swim back to shore? We left land _days ago._ "

"There's the shore boat," Quentin growled, starting to lower said boat into the sea, a focused frown on his face; it was the one meant to explore islands when the approach was too shallow for the Muntjac to land safely.

Oh, that was probably not going to go well. Eliot winced, remembering their boating adventures in Quentin's first year at Brakebills; the two had rowed (poorly) all the way to the edges of the wards, watching the world drop into the gray fullness of Fall, before turning back and rowing back into Brakebill's hazy summer embrace. Those days had been so simple and uncomplicated; Eliot felt a pang of nostalgia for them.

Eliot had wondered for a brief time, even back then, what it would be like to pursue Quentin beyond the thought of it. He wondered if Quentin would respond favorably; if Quentin would consider it and reject him, even though he was _so_ open to the idea of it; Eliot had seen the way Quentin leaned into him, matching Eliot's body language. Even back then, he'd known they could be good together, but he'd held back; everyone knew Eliot Waugh fucked up people, sent them running for the hills, and he'd really started to enjoy the idea of having Quentin around for keeps.

Anyway, that wasn't the point, the _point_ was that Quentin was a terrible rower, and it had taken them hours to figure out how to steer and paddle the boat. They'd been more than a little drunk that day, too.

Quentin was sober right now, Eliot thought. And so, unfortunately, was he. Which was why he had to watch as Quentin managed to lower the boat to the water, crawled over the side, yelped at a cold spray of water, and then—he was almost _catapulted_ back onto the deck in a sprawl of limbs.

Eliot and Benedict ran to his side, helping him to his feet; Quentin swore the air blue, and glared at Eliot like this was entirely his fault before stalking off below deck, muttering to himself.

"Is King Quentin okay?" Benedict asked in a hushed voice.

"You know, Benedict," Eliot said, sliding an arm around his shoulder, "I ask myself that question a _lot_."

* * *

It was only a matter of time before Margo saw it happening for herself. Eliot had been dreading it happening. Her reduced range of vision had been a blessing for the first time, in that it had prolonged her noticing the ship's hijinks for four days.

Eliot's guard was lowered—most of the Stone Queen's delegation had retired for the night, and the Fairy Queen had fucked off to wherever she fucked off to at night—he hadn't noticed Quentin had entered the room with a pile of laundry for Prince Fomar until it was too late; Fomar's undergarments were all over the floor, and Quentin was neatly in Eliot's arms, a look of resigned annoyance on his face.

Quentin scowled as he bent to pick up the clothing as quickly as he could before Fomar—staring dazedly at Margo's face—noticed it was his wardrobe that had been sent crashing to the ground and demanded it be rewashed.

"Did...the Muntjac just shove you both together?" Margo arched an eyebrow, at the branch curling out of the wall that had been the culprit, and at Quentin and Eliot who were refusing to look at each other. "Hm."

"She's been doing it since we got on board," Tick said, the damned snitch.

"I did say she was misbehaving," Quentin mumbled.

Margo wiggled her hand between them. "Is there something going on here I should know about?"

"No," Eliot said, wincing when he realized Quentin had said it at the exact same time; there was probably no other guiltier-sounding response that they could have made. "Fine, we had a...disagreement a couple of days ago. I think the ship's trying to get us to kiss and make up."

Quentin, to his credit, only flinched a little bit at Eliot's casually thoughtless phrasing.

"Hm," Margo said, and opened her mouth to say something else.

"It is nighttime," Fomar announced loudly, striding over to stand near them, rolling his eyes at Eliot's face before turning fully to face Margo. "We should retire to our chamber, milady. For my bedtime tale, if nothing else. Not that I would _begrudge_ you needing my manly embrace—"

Quentin, also to his credit, managed to swallow back the laugh he obviously wanted to make.

"Unfortunately, my _love,_ " Margo said the endearment like she might say the word _homework_ or _off-the-rack_ , "we're still on Fillorian waters. It would be so _distinctly_ unfavorable on our union for it to happen here. Be patient a little longer." She fixed a smile on her face which trembled on the edge of grimace territory. "After all, we're both so young, we have _so_ many more years ahead of us..."

"Of course, my darling," Fomar trilled, beaming at Quentin and Eliot, "I know your beauty will fade, but I'm sure I can enjoy your body for at least a couple of years before you start to sag unpleasantly with age."

Margo's face was a thunderstorm. Eliot was both horrified on her behalf, but also relieved that her curiosity had been evaporated in favor of rage at her situation.

"I'll see you chuckleheads in the morning," Margo hissed, before being dragged off by Fomar.

"I...guess I'll put these in their room in the morning," Quentin sighed.

"Hm. How about you noisily interrupt every hour or so with a single item?" Eliot shrugged. "Margo would appreciate the break from fending him off."

Quentin nodded, his face crumpled. "Shit, I've been so pissed off with the boat I almost forgot that we still have to figure out how we're going to help her."

"I wish I could forget." Eliot shook his head. Quentin put his hand on Eliot's shoulder, the heavy warmth reassuring, and when Eliot looked, the ship hadn't compelled that touch.

"We'll figure it out," Quentin said.

Eliot nodded in response; words felt too difficult right at that moment.

"I'll, uh, I'll get ready to return his clothes," Quentin mumbled and hurried away without looking back.

Eliot stared in the direction he'd disappeared, frowning heavily.

"You must forgive me for asking, your Majesty," Tick said, while Eliot startled and immediately tried to pretend he hadn't forgotten Tick was still there, "but are all children of Earth so strange?"

"Some of us," Eliot said, clapping him on the back companionably, "are even stranger."

* * *

It took three more collisions—another one at breakfast time when Eliot somehow found himself bent over Quentin at the end of one of the long tables; a hallway embrace when two doors immediately decided to open and close sending them _both_ stumbling at each other; and finally one more time in the main room of the ship, branches flitting forward to bodily wind themselves around Quentin and Eliot, dragging them into an embrace—for Margo to figure out the ship wasn't just playing games.

Quentin and Eliot were wrapped _really_ tightly by the branches this time; when Eliot tried to move, his knees almost buckled. Apparently the mosaic memories came with weird sense memories too, because Quentin being _this_ close was making his body _all_ kinds of interested.

At least, as he discovered when Quentin tried to wriggle free, Eliot wasn't alone in his...interest.

Eliot tried to look anywhere _but_ Quentin's flushed face. Thankfully the room was free of non-Fillorians; he shuddered to think what the Fairy Queen would do with that information. Unfortunately, looking elsewhere meant he was stuck looking at Margo's suddenly very-knowing expression.

Margo's eyebrows launched upward in a way that Eliot might find comical if he wasn't too busy being mortified. "I don't think the ship _is_ trying to get you two to play nice. Is it me, or is this boat trying to get you two to bang?"

"Oh my god," Quentin muttered, face flushing; he couldn't meet anyone's gaze.

"Oh, that would explain much of what's been going on here," Tick said, sounding way too excited about the prospect.

Eliot stared balefully up at the ceiling, trying not to think about how close he was pressed to Quentin, and how much of Quentin's warmth he could feel against him; Quentin always wore clothes fashioned from the flimsiest of fabrics, it meant Eliot could mostly feel the shift of Quentin's muscles under his skin as he fidgeted in the Muntjac's wooden embrace.

Quentin's fidgeting was _not_ helping Eliot's current…. pant situation.

"I guess she's horny," Eliot gritted out.

"Looks like she's not alone," Margo commented in a too-amused sing-song voice, smirking down at where the Muntjac's branches were pushing Quentin and Eliot together, and, oh, Ember's hairy ballsacks, they were both hard, unmistakably so.

Quentin's cheeks had that high-spot of red on them that Eliot liked. He'd spent a lot of years kissing those blushes. At least, he felt like he had. Damn that stupid mosaic.

"Wait," Eliot said, and blinked down at his crotch in surprise, "I _am_ horny."

"That's what I said," Margo said

Eliot glared at her in plain confusion, because his dick hadn't vacated the premises: it was definitely interested in the proceedings; it was saluting the fact that Quentin was solidly pushed up against him in more than one interesting place. "But _how_? I'm—My marriage contract—"

In the periphery of Eliot's vision, Quentin's mouth fell open slightly.

"Oh, there's an exception between monarchs, of course," Tick said brightly, his mustache quivering as he beamed at the three of them like he hadn't just dropped the fucking bomb of the century.

The betrayal sounded like wind rushing in Eliot's ears. All that time without sex, and he could have had sex—he and Quentin could have been boning for _weeks_ before Eliot had even _heard_ the word mosaic _—_ he bet he could have talked Quentin into it, even before Eliot had Stockholmed Quentin into loving him in that other fucked-up timeline.

" _You_ I believe for not telling me because you're an incompetent busybody," Eliot glared at Tick. " _You_ two, however, are the most Fillory-nerds who've ever Fillory nerded. I can't believe you hung me out to dry like this!"

"It's not like it came up in the books!" Quentin hissed.

"Which is reassuring, considering they were, y'know, _siblings,_ " Margo added, folding her arms and looking overly amused at Eliot's distress. He probably deserved it.

"It _is_ some Folger's level shit," Eliot mused. "Hm. I might be kinda into it."

Even Margo looked faintly nauseated by that, which was satisfying; if she was busy mentally vomiting, she wouldn't be thinking about why Eliot was being so spectacularly shifty.

"Look, ship, whatever you think is happening here, it literally cannot happen if we can't move," Quentin hissed in the direction of the Heartwood; the Heartwood's soft pulsing light seemed to stutter for a second before it brightened again and the branches loosened.

Quentin immediately extracted himself, breathing hard, and then, when Margo's gaze dipped with an amused smile to his crotch, Quentin yelped and picked up the nearest object—a basket of apples. He tipped the apples on the floor furiously and glared at her. " _Anyone_ would—close—stimulation—" Realizing his stuttering was just making Margo grin wider he settled for glaring at her. "I'm glad my misery is amusing to you."

"Oh, Quentin, your misery is amusing to no one," Margo said. "Your embarrassment, on the other hand—"

Quentin made a noise that really was amusing, even if it was born purely of frustration.

Eliot freed himself, glaring at the branches as he did; while Quentin hid his arousal with the apple basket, Eliot put his hands on his hips, reveling in the situation of his body responding like it should.

"Calm down, Coldwater," Eliot said, "it's kind of funny."

" _Funny?_ You think it's funny? It's _humiliating._ "

"That an actual ship _ships us?_ There's comedy there, Q. Even _you_ should appreciate that much."

"Even _I?_ What the hell's that supposed to mean."

"You know what that means."

"Well guess what, Waugh," Quentin said, "you're still the _opposite_ of _screwed,_ so—"

"Children, children, simmer down," Margo interrupted, pushing between them, looking way too amused considering her own impending peril. "Sit. Let your fairy-hating possibly-a-god never-a-mother figure this shit out for you, okay?"

Quentin glowered and sank into a chair, shrugging uselessly as if to say _go right fucking ahead but you're wasting your time._

"Fine," Eliot spat, sinking to the ground and hiding his face in his hands for a while. Perhaps if he wished really hard, everything would just disappear. Oblivion sounded good right about now.

* * *

There was a big difference between Eliot being on the case (a grand solution of fuck-all so far at figuring out how to save Margo from her child groom hell) and _Margo Motherfucking Hanson_ being on the case. As in, she solved it in less than two hours, because she was a miracle wrapped up in designer dresses and a rocking bod.

"I actually found something, unbelievers," Margo smirked, beckoning them over with a perfectly manicured finger. "Check this out."

"These are the deed papers to the Muntjac," Tick exclaimed, peering over it, wide-eyed. "I can't fathom how such a boring document could be helpful."

"See, that's what I thought. But I was finding it difficult to sleep with my child-bride just down the hall, and there's a _depressingly_ small amount of sedatives in the hold, I figured we should save those for a real necessity and I turned to the most boring documents I could find." Margo tapped at the scroll. "And this beauty ended up solving at least one mystery."

"The Muntjac's Heartwood," Quentin read out loud, peering over the paper, and then his face paled, pinching. "It's...from an orchard…owned by the Coldwater-Waugh family."

Eliot stared at Quentin in shock. What the _fuck_?

That was impossible. It had to be a coincidence. The mosaic had been in an alternate timeline. Quentin had fucking wiped it out, and their family, when he sent that damned letter and the key to Margo.

"Oh, yes," Tick said, brightly. "The Coldwater-Waugh family have been _quite_ obnoxious since you were all crowned, they've been claiming all _sorts_ of countenance to the throne. We know sharing _two_ surnames is all a coincidence of course, but they've been _excessively_ noisy for a family line that just mostly sells stone fruits."

Quentin's voice was almost a ghost when he said, reverently, "Peaches and plums."

" _Precisely,_ " Tick said, his mustache twitching in derision. "I guess they expanded their orchards in cooperation with the dryads, and now they're...they're all so _pretentious_. Just because they happen to share two surnames of the crown!"

"So mystery solved, I guess." Margo snickered up at Eliot and Quentin, mistaking their shock for, well, shock of a different kind. "She thinks you're two misbehaving members of her family who need to be together."

"Uh," Eliot said, "well, that's one minor mystery solved. I guess after this escapade is done, Q and I just… won't be on the ship at the same time. That should solve it."

Quentin's face went carefully blank. "Fine by me," he said, quietly. "I'm—I'm just gonna go get some fresh air, okay?"

Margo snorted. "It's pitch black up there."

"Just need—" Quentin gestured vaguely and headed for the door.

Margo's expression colored; concern replaced her amusement. "Is he gonna be okay?"

"Just a little seasick, I think," Eliot squeezed Margo's shoulder distractedly. His head and heart were both kind of screaming at him. "I'll go and see if he's okay. You good with fending off your horny husband if he wakes up needing a bottle?"

Margo narrowed her eye. "If the ship makes you bang Quentin on the top deck, at least keep your moans down so everyone _stays_ asleep."

"Everyone's a comedian," Eliot quipped.

* * *

As Eliot expected, Quentin was on the top deck, leaning against the mainmast, staring out at the Fillorian night sky. Eliot's gaze followed his. Quentin knew the name of all the Fillorian constellations; Eliot remembered a fragment of a memory, stargazing on the mosaic together, pointing out the shapes, only Eliot had gotten distracted by Quentin's long, capable fingers; the stargazing had swiftly become something else, stars exploding behind Eliot's eyelids as their bodies moved together, comfortable and knowing.

Eliot blinked the afterburn of that memory away. Quentin was so much younger now than that heavenly creature in his mind, the strong and naked body taking him apart so confidently after decades together; Eliot could see the ghost of the man Quentin would become in his face, in the way his hands were clenched uncertainly by his sides.

He watched Quentin for longer than he wanted to put a name to, because of how revealing that fact would be; he studied the rise and fall of Quentin's chest, the tense lines of his shoulders, the sharp angles of his shadow-blocked profile as he stared up at Fillory's moon.

There was a woman who lived in the moon, Quentin had told Teddy one night when Arielle's death was fresh and no one could sleep, and she cried every day into a lake of silver tears. And every so often, she would pull out the stopper and let the water fall to Fillory, where it became the lakes and the rivers and the sea. She cried because up there in the stars she couldn't be with her loved ones, but she had to stay there, or no one would have any water.

Teddy thought that Arielle was the woman in the moon. Sometimes Eliot would find their young son standing in the rain, his face turned to the sky. There was a lot of his profile to be found in the angles of Quentin's face.

It wasn't raining tonight, but there was water in the air from the sea. The sea Arielle might have cried for Teddy, if myths could be spoken into reality.

"Come back inside," Eliot entreated, softly.

Quentin startled, and, seeing Eliot, wrapped his arms around himself, making himself look smaller, but he nodded and followed Eliot back down the steps. The ship didn't push them closer together; Eliot didn't know whether to be pleased or sad about that, because he wished he had an excuse to hug Quentin. The space between them felt much too solid.

Margo and Tick were gone when they re-entered the room. Eliot expected Quentin to mumble his excuses and scurry to bed, so he could cry in peace, but instead of going to find his hammock, Quentin headed to the table where Margo had left the Muntjac's deed sprawled open.

Quentin thumped into the chair like he was a puppet who'd just had all his strings cut; he stared at the paper dully and then seemed to perk up, his fingers moving to the scroll, and then he was unfurling it, his eyes burning into the paper with an almost terrifying sudden focus.

"There's a record of provenance," Quentin said, looking up at Eliot with wide eyes that they were both valiantly pretending weren't shining with threatening tears. "Um. For the people who tended the Heartwood."

Eliot found himself moving like a magnet was drawing him forward, even though he knew he was doing it of his own volition; part of him was screaming to back away, stick his head under a pillow, forget all of this was happening. His eyes moved to where Quentin's fingers were reverently tracing a line and his breath caught in his throat.

_Heartwood tended by: Julia Jane Coldwater-Waugh; Margo Arielle Coldwater-Waugh; Eliot Theodore Coldwater-Waugh; Rupert Charles Coldwater-Waugh; Elle Coldwater-Waugh; Bambi Coldwater-Waugh._

"Those names," Quentin said, and he was crying then, and Eliot couldn't blame him; he felt like he was choking on something too, a weight in his chest, a furnace in his throat, a waterfall pushing behind his eyes.

"How is that even possible?" Eliot dropped too, barely registering that he managed to land in a seat when he did; perhaps the ship was still helping them, in its own weird way. "It didn't happen. It didn't _happen._ "

Eliot's brain was looping the memories, in a way he had to admit he had since they came back, he'd just been trying not to think about it. They'd received the full fifty years' worth of emotions, but not the fifty years of matching memories, not in the way he was desperate for, to join those dots, to just remember _more_ of their son, of their life—

Eliot had been wrecked by it, that's been the problem. Just the slight _ghost_ of the idea that Ted might have ceased to exist, that Quentin handed over the key to Jane and then sent that letter to Margo, erasing their family in one fell swoop… All for fucking _magic…_

The thought of it has been driving him _insane._

His head hadn't been able to shut up about it since they got their memories of it back, shrieking it at a volume that he hasn't been able to ignore. He wasn't just a shit father to Fray, he was just...the worst possible father anyone could ever have. He'd died and hadn't been able to let Quentin know that he was okay with magic being fucked, if it kept their family real and alive…

But then, that might have been selfish, because how long would anyone be safe in a Fillory that continued to be free from magic?

As usual, they were screwed in every possible direction.

"Paradox magic in action, I guess." Quentin's voice trembled. "I've had flashes of the end, and… I remember snatches of a conversation with Jane at the Clock Barrens. She thought we might remember, because… it _was_ always us that solved the mosaic. For Jane to get the key to reset the timeline forty times...it was always _us_ that went back in time, always the fortieth iteration of us. So it wasn't an alternate timeline so much as…"

"Convergent," Eliot whispered. He didn't know quite where the word came from—maybe even more from the horomancy elective stuck in his brain than he thought—but it seemed right.

"Maybe if there'd been more magic in the air we would have got all the memories, instead of them being so patchy." Quentin shook his head. "I remember being scared anyway, that maybe I was doing the wrong thing, sending that letter to Margo. That I was undoing everything we'd done."

"You still did it anyway." Eliot hated the accusing tone in his voice, he _hated_ it, but he couldn't remove it, and he couldn't recall the words once they were out.

Quentin sounded defeated. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did."

Eliot hated that even more. He thought about it. Would he have done the same, if he'd even had a moment of doubt about it? He tried to picture it: Quentin dead, and Jane earnestly asking for the key, and then making a last pilgrimage to get a letter to Margo, to arrange for it to be sent to her wedding… He didn't think he would have been strong enough.

"I couldn't have done it," Eliot said. He felt like it was almost someone else speaking the words, like he was hearing his voice from a long way away, but he knew what he was saying was true. "You were brave."

Quentin turned his face to Eliot's; his expression was taut. Tortured. "I'm really not."

"You really fucking are," Eliot said, heated. He scooted forward in the chair, grabbing for Quentin's hands without thinking about it, in a way he knew he'd done hundreds of times before, even if his fingers didn't have the muscle memory of it. "I couldn't have done it because I'm selfish. And scared, pretty much all the time."

Quentin shot him an odd look, an expression Eliot almost wanted to describe as _fond_ , but that didn't make much sense. "You really are fine with the truth, aren't you?"

"Ah, sometimes." Eliot's gaze moved to the paper. "Other times it freaks the shit out of me and I act accordingly."

"Yeah," Quentin said, and there was that same note in his voice, _fondness,_ and Eliot's chest felt weirdly tight, "I remember." He made a noise of pure disbelief. "I thought it was still...a parallel timeline, or an alternate one. I didn't think it would be _this_ one." He gestured at the list of names, shaking his head in disbelief. "Teddy really fucking did us proud, didn't he?" Quentin's voice cracked at that and he looked up at Eliot, eyes shining.

All Eliot could do was nod. "He always did. Every day."

Their hands were still entwined. Eliot couldn't look away from Quentin. His chest felt tight. Teddy hadn't ceased to exist; he'd gotten to live on, have his full life, and he had descendants, multiple ones, a strong family line. Eliot wasn't the shittiest father to ever exist as he'd feared; it had been unfair to think he might be, since he couldn't think of Quentin as a terrible father, even if the letter _had_ vanished their entire family out of existence. Every day of Teddy's life had been a gift, something he wouldn't have had otherwise. Eliot missed him, so much; he was barely coping with the grief of it with the handful of memories he _did_ have.

Teddy wasn't gone, though. He'd left his trace all over Fillory, with a full family line, and a ship that had been built from a Coldwater-Waugh-tended tree.

"Was there always a door there?" Quentin asked; Eliot jolted out of his thoughts to see Quentin had noticed a new door in the wall, its edges glowing with a faint warmth.

"No," Eliot said, getting to his feet. He faintly registered that Quentin's hand was still in his own as he moved, but it didn't occur to him to let go. "Doors do keep popping up on this quest. And they're not always kind. Is there a keyhole?"

Quentin shook his head. "Just a handle." He eyed Eliot warily, letting Eliot tug him closer to the door. "Maybe there's something locked behind it? Maybe we've edged closer to the Abyss than we thought on this journey, and there's a key on the other side?"

"I'm a little wary of weird doors," Eliot said, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from it. The curiosity warred with his fear. "We could just peek?"

Quentin shrugged a single shoulder at him and carefully swung the door open, moving back skittishly like something might tumble out and surprise them.

Nothing did. Eliot found himself staring into the revealed room, unable to tear his gaze away. It was beautiful, a small nook of a bedroom. There was a generous bed that almost touched all three walls, with soft fluffy pillows and a golden quilt that made Eliot think immediately of how good Quentin would look spread across it. The walls were covered in twisting, winding branches, and in the corner, a few branches dipped down low. Peaches were growing on those branches, plump and inviting. The room was softly aglow and Eliot could feel the warmth emanating from it.

A perfect little room for two people to lock the world away and indulge only in each other for hours…

But when Eliot turned to see how Quentin was taking it, Quentin's face was pinched and sad, his eyes locked on the peaches. There was a blush on his cheeks which was nice, and Eliot had _oh_ so many beautiful snapshots of memory that told him just how far down that blush went.

"Guess the ship really _is_ shipping us, huh?" Quentin said, softly. He looked up at Eliot and Eliot couldn't misinterpret Quentin's expression: it was hope. There was so much bright, lovely _hope_ in it. For a second, Eliot pictured himself giving into it; he could see himself taking Quentin's cheek in his hand, and kissing him, over and over until dawn. And Quentin could picture it too, because he was swaying closer, his gaze dipping to Eliot's mouth…

"No," Eliot said, closing his eyes and stepping back. He yanked his hand back from Quentin's and clenched his hands into fists. "I will _not_ let a magical fucking _ship_ push me into something I do not want."

Quentin's face fell, too quickly for him to pretend he wasn't disappointed.

Eliot's head was spinning. This was too much. Everything was crashing in on his head at once.

There was only one thing he knew for sure: Quentin didn't love him. At the mosaic, it had been him making the best of a bad situation. Eliot was convenient, that was all. He was all that was around. Okay, Quentin might have fallen in love with him on _some_ level, but it was probably just Stockholm Syndrome, and there were echoes of that happening to him now, there must be.

Quentin might _think_ he felt something for Eliot, but it was only because, once more, they were being shoved together in a situation they didn't choose. But Quentin's expression was clear to Eliot, he _knew_ him; Quentin wouldn't give up on Eliot, because he didn't quit people, even when he should. He had to have known Julia would have never loved him from early into their friendship, but he'd followed her around like a puppy for years anyway. Quentin deserved good things. Eliot was not a good thing. He never had been. At least being a bad person meant he could find the fire to burn Quentin so he knew not to come back.

Quentin deserved to _choose_ who to love. Eliot might have been freaking out in the throne room, but it didn't make his parting words to Quentin any less true: Quentin wouldn't choose him, if he had the choice. Right now he thought he _had_ to, so he could pacify the fucking ship, or he thought he owed Eliot something somehow, or maybe he just felt sorry for him, because Ember forbid Quentin Coldwater ever drop a lost cause when he should.

"You don't want this?" Quentin asked, in a small voice. "Because, I don't know, it kind of seems like—"

"Oh, because I got hard when we were shoved together earlier?" Eliot rolled his eyes. " _Anyone_ would, it doesn't mean anything."

"Right," Quentin said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "Right. Sure. Sorry."

"You should be," Eliot said, tilting his chin.

Quentin's brow furrowed. He was getting angry. Good. " _Excuse_ me?"

"You're hardly fighting the ship," Eliot hissed. His eyes hurt. He hated everything about this. But he was doing what was best for both of them, why couldn't Quentin see that? In time, Quentin would find another woman to bang; if not Alice, another red-head, maybe. And he would forget all about Eliot, and that would hurt too, but at least one of them would be happy. Eliot was a lost cause for happiness; he might as well make sure he wasn't taking Quentin down with him. Umber, why was Quentin making this so _difficult_?

There was still too much hope in Quentin's eyes. "I don't know what you're saying—" Quentin started.

"Yeah, you do." Eliot stared at him. "You know exactly what I'm saying." A mosaic echo shuddered through both of them; a reminder of the bitterness that they couldn't even escape from in a beautiful fantastical impossible timeline that had apparently happened, but what difference did that really make? They'd been trapped there. Here, Quentin could be free _._ "You wanted to make a go of this and you keep letting yourself get into situations where we're shoved together. Even though I _clearly said no._ How many times do I have to make it fucking clear, Quentin, _that isn't me._ "

"It _was_ you, for fifty fucking years, Eliot." Quentin glared at him. "I don't know why I bother with you sometimes. You're such a fucking blockhead."

Eliot knew he was being a little bit childish, but it wasn't fair that he had to be this explicit to send Quentin away. He had to. Quentin didn't really love him. Quentin _couldn't._ "Takes one to know one."

Quentin made an irritated noise and headed for the door. "You know what—fuck this shit. Fuck this absolute shit."

"Yeah," Eliot murmured, mostly to himself, "that's right." After Quentin had stormed off, Eliot glanced over at the tree that had been inspiring this misery. It might have been his imagination, but the Heartwood seemed to darken, its branches drooping slightly. " _Yeah,_ you _should_ feel bad."

The Muntjac didn't respond, but it did close the door on the little peach bedroom.

* * *

Quentin took Eliot's second rejection to heart; Eliot barely saw him for the following two days, and when he did, it was because the Muntjac was still up to its usual tricks. Except this time, when Eliot found himself with an armful of Quentin, Quentin looked so angry and pained that Eliot couldn't do anything but numbly stumble back and let Quentin go.

For the rest of the time, Quentin avoided him, and that should have given Eliot extra brain space to figure out Margo's problem, but it was hard to strategize when his brain was a constant cycle of screaming. He'd done the right thing, he was sure of it, so why was his brain being such a hairy _dick_ about it?

A voice in his mind that sounded much too like Arielle's pointed out that _maybe_ Eliot could have just sat down and had an actual human conversation about it with Quentin...

Eliot wanted to tell that voice to fuck off, but he missed her too. His memories of her weren't as clear as he thought Quentin's must be; he hadn't been jealous of her, she'd slipped so easily into their life, loving them both in different ways. Starry-eyed at the Children of Earth in her bed, who loved so generously, and told her tales of far-off lands and the strange ways of a world which hid its magic away like a dirty secret, not a wondrous thing. She professed she had no magic of her own, but no vegetable or fruit suffered under her careful touch, and she could always soothe Teddy through any discomfort with her gentle voice, humming a Fillorian lullaby.

Eliot was only part of their equation because he was there. He had just been...convenient. Quentin should be able to choose whomever he wanted, and not stay with Eliot out of a sense of… obligation or whatever. He'd done the right thing, even if the method could have been a little more adult.

He couldn't sleep. There was just too much stress to even let him keep his eyes closed for longer than a few moments, too many chastisements running through his mind. He'd just had to kick Quentin when he was already down, hadn't he? Eliot rubbed his temples. He needed to go for a walk, clear his mind, so he could focus on his problem with Margo. He climbed up to the deck, trying not to look at the stars, because they'd always make him think about Quentin. His mind needed to be on Margo.

There was a dose of sedatives in the hold, enough to slip Fomar and make him sleep for the week, but the Stone Queen had said the ship would respond to royals banging each other. Perhaps he could knock Fomar out and bed Margo himself, now he knew about the royal exception? It wouldn't be the first time. He wasn't exceptionally in the mood, but he _definitely_ wasn't in the mood for a life without Margo.

Maybe Quentin would bed her. Yeah, that made sense; she'd taken him so sweetly their first time together, gentle with him in a way Eliot had rarely seen Margo be with someone. Maybe Quentin and Margo would fall in love. Oh, that would sting, a little, Eliot thought, but his two favorite people together… That could only bring joy to the two of them.

Eliot needed to run the idea past Margo first, see who she'd rather bang while her husband slept, before he approached Quentin with the idea. He squared his shoulders. This was the best thing to do. They were nearly in non-Fillorian waters; the ruse couldn't be stretched out much more.

He slipped down the stairs and down the hall to reach the chamber Margo and her young problem were sleeping in, but he froze at the sound of someone's voice.

Quentin's voice, Eliot's mind provided giddily.

"I need you to stop," Quentin said.

Eliot froze, and then carefully peered through the door, to see Quentin's back to him. How had Quentin seen him?

Except, Quentin _hadn't_ seen him. Quentin was apparently.. talking to the tree?

"Please. Stop whatever this is that you think you're doing," Quentin said, putting one of his hands on the pulsing light of the Heartwood. Eliot couldn't see his face, but he knew what Quentin's expression would look like: strained, desperate, _tired._ "I know you think you're doing something good, putting two pieces of a puzzle back together, reunited two names that you think should be combined into one—or maybe you've heard stories, if our—oh god, our grandchildren, if they talked about us—the way Ari used to describe me and El to Teddy, maybe—"

Quentin's rambling had always been something Eliot's found endearing before, but right now each word felt like a shard of glass in his heart, lemon juice poured in an open wound. Eliot should back off and let Quentin have this private moment.

"I need you to stop trying to hook me and Eliot up," Quentin said. "It fucking hurts. He doesn't want me like that."

Was Quentin's voice cracking? Eliot could barely hear it above the sound of his own heart breaking. This was a heartache of his own making. Eliot _did_ want it, more than he should; why couldn't Quentin understand that Eliot was holding himself back for a good reason?

Quentin deserved someone he could choose for _himself,_ not just someone jammed into a bad situation with him. Quentin deserved someone _better_ , someone who wouldn't still be there, listening to something Quentin obviously didn't intend others to hear.

"I wish you could respond in a way I knew meant you'd heard me," Quentin sighed, and leaned his forehead against the trunk. Grown in the Coldwater-Waugh orchard, Eliot thought, through the sharp ache of pain. Next to the plum and peach orchard, probably; there was always a nice patch of fertile land that Eliot had always thought could be developed into something interesting.

Well, mosaic Eliot had thought that; Eliot of _now_ could remember the repetitive thought, carrying through several of the patches of memories.

"I've _asked_ him _,_ " Quentin muttered, sounding angry. "He said no. People are allowed to say no, even if _you_ think they should say yes. Eliot doesn't want to be with me and you need to respect that. He said it clearly: he would never choose me, so you have to—"

"What?" Eliot blurted, forgetting he was supposed to be getting out of there, forgetting this was a private heart-to-heart he had no fucking right to hear, because Quentin—what the fuck was Quentin even talking about? "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Quentin startled, swiveled to see Eliot, and nearly tripped over his own feet, steadying himself on the Heartwood. "What the fuck?" Quentin blurted, a semi-echo to Eliot's question.

Eliot stormed forward; now his escape has been blown (okay, mostly by his own ineptitude, but that's not the point), he didn't need to hide. "What the fuck do you mean, _I_ would never choose _you_. That wasn't the problem here at _all_."

Quentin's mouth fell open, slack and confused. "Are you gaslighting me right now?"

"Uh, I think I'd know if I was," Eliot glared. "Of _course_ I'd fucking choose you. Anyone would. So what are you wittering on about?"

Quentin was gaping now, his mouth moving uselessly, and his eyes narrowed like somehow _Eliot_ was the insane one. "In the damn throne room, when I—when I _fucking_ bared my heart to you and you tossed me aside like a moldy peach pit—"

Eliot winced; _some_ of that was truth enough. "I _said_ ," Eliot said, heatedly, "that _you_ would never choose _me._ "

"You fucking did _not._ " Quentin glared. "You said that _you_ wouldn't choose _me."_

Eliot squinted. "I mean, okay, I said it wasn't me because—fifty years of emotions, shoved into _this_ hot mess of a brain in one go—that much domesticity gives me kind of a _panic and run_ kind of feeling in _small_ doses! Let alone fifty years of fucking domestic _bliss_. But it's _definitely_ not you, not in a world with—with Alice, and who knows how many mysterious redheads who would totally be into you, and—you'd never pick me over all that choice, why the fuck would you when there are a million better options? And you know what, _thank you_ for making me say that out loud. My self-esteem really needed that."

"You fucking _idiot,_ " Quentin hissed through his teeth, somehow remembering they were supposed to be considerate of the others sleeping nearby, because of _course_ Quentin was kind like that, not self-involved like Eliot was 99% of the freaking time. "How _dare_ you decide that for me? You think you—fuck, you think I fell in love with you just because you were _convenient?_ "

Eliot jutted his jaw mulishly, the words _fell in love with you_ ringing in his ear like a tinnitus whine. "Well," he drew out the word for a beat too long, "I was kind of the only one there—"

"I cannot fucking believe you—" Quentin pushed forward, glaring at Eliot. "Eliot, you're not a convenient person to love."

Eliot's jaw dropped. "I didn't know self-esteem could drop into minus figures, but that's where mine seems to be plunging."

"Your ego's fine," Quentin waved a hand, "you just can't tell because you've gone absolutely _fruit loops._ I should know, I've _been committed._ You'd fit right in!" Quentin was shouting a little now; Eliot didn't know why he found that so reassuring.

"So if I'm so _inconvenient,_ " Eliot labored the word, "then why the fuck would you—"

"Because you're _Eliot,_ " Quentin said, much more firmly now, like that made sense to him. "Because I do! Because I'd choose to love you in any fucking timeline, or time loop, or wherever the fuck this stupid quest or life sends us next."

Eliot stared at Quentin. Quentin was breathing like he'd just run a marathon, and his gaze was fierce, but that fire was slipping, fading away as his anger drained, and he was going to notice soon that Eliot had frozen, that Eliot hasn't responded, and it was _Quentin,_ he'd take that as rejection—

He should let that happen. Eliot should just let Quentin fold in on himself and quietly run away to nurse a broken heart. If Eliot _were_ braver, he _would_ let that happen. He'd spent so long pushing Quentin away, and much of it was with the force of the belief that Quentin would never pick Eliot, not if he had a _choice,_ but if that was a lie…

Quentin was starting to withdraw, his posture tensing to run, and Eliot couldn't bear it—he crossed the floor swiftly and did what he'd been aching to do since the throne room. He took Quentin's face in his hands and kissed him firmly, right on the mouth.

These bodies didn't have the muscle memories of the mosaic, but Eliot could swear immediately that Quentin's body _knew_ his; Quentin kissed him back after a stunned pause, and it was perfect. It was lying on the mosaic, staring up at the stars, nuzzling their son as he lay between them, _home._ Teddy was real, Teddy was _real_ , he actually existed; Quentin and Eliot fell in love, hundreds of years before, and Eliot knew that they were somehow falling in love again, right that second. The ache of that old love sparked against this new budding version; Eliot's knees felt a little weak; who the heck goddamn knew Quentin Coldwater's kisses could do that to a guy?

 _I knew. Or I used to,_ Eliot thought. _I'd like to know it again._

"Oh, I'm gonna fuck this up so hard," Eliot murmured against Quentin's lips. "You're aware of that, right?"

"I mean," Quentin said, "me too? Probably? I feel like we did a lot, at the mosaic."

"You kick things a lot when you're frustrated."

"Uh, you mean I accidentally walk into things a lot."

Eliot moved his mouth to Quentin's neck, vaguely recalling an interesting spot near the join of wood to flesh that used to make Quentin moan. He bit it experimentally and smiled into Quentin's skin when it seemed to be the same here. Why wouldn't it? The timeline fucking _happened._ Fillory was _teeming_ with their descendants. Shit. That was probably why the knife declared him High King. It knew. He was always coming to Fillory because he always _had._ Huh. He'd thought he needed peyote for time travel to make sense; apparently, Quentin's kisses had a similar effect.

"Accidentally on _purpose,_ " Eliot clarified, kissing along Quentin's jawline. Why on Fillory _and_ Earth had he denied them both this?

"Well. Maybe." Quentin shuffled, trying to casually rearrange his pants, and Eliot grinned and grabbed Quentin's waist, pulling them both together, and _oh,_ there it was; that frisson of delight was just as good as Eliot's memories too. "But as much as we fucked up back then, I seem to remember it being fucking worth it. Anyone else would have blown up that mosaic in _days._ "

"I almost want to set Margo up with it and place bets on how long it will take her to blow," Eliot said. He felt giddy.

"If anyone had to do it again, I'd volunteer."

Eliot pulled back a little, still holding Quentin in the circle of his arms; had it ever felt so fucking good just _holding_ someone before? It was mind-boggling how good it felt. "I know you're romanticizing it right now because the good parts were _good._ But it was hell, too. I don't remember our years there clearly, but I remember it was pretty damn awful a lot of the time." He curved his fingers and nudged Quentin's cheek with his knuckles; Quentin pressed into the touch. That neediness in bed used to be so fucking _hot._ And Eliot had wanted it to never happen again? Shit for brains, he must have actual shit for brains. Or. Y'know. A lifetime of trauma and emotional rejection and daddy issues and intimacy issues and genuine reasons to be a panicky fuck-up. That too.

Quentin simply shrugged. "I think I'd always pick a terrible place, as long as you were there, rather than somewhere nice where you're...not. So you can fuck up. You can hurt me until we push each other apart and try and add more cracks and scars. But I'll still be here when the dust settles. I'll still _want_ to be here."

"You can't be sure of that."

"What can we be sure of in life?"

"That fairies are fucking creepy, Margo should never genuinely be left near sharp objects unsupervised, Fen likes knives—"

"Gods are kind of terrible. Questing Beasts are ambiguous, contrary motherfuckers."

"The Great Cock once called you the brother of my heart," Eliot said, slowly. Did that particular Questing Beast know that he and Quentin were going to fall in love with each other?

" _Brother_ of your heart," Quentin echoed, pursing his kiss-swollen lips in a very distracting manner. He quirked a grin that Eliot mentally termed as sexy and _devastating._ "Sounds like some Folger's level shit."

"Lucky for us," Eliot murmured, and kissed Quentin again, "I'm kinda into it."

Quentin smiled into the kiss and then broke away to say, in a surprised tone, "Hey, the door to the peach room is back."

Eliot raised his eyebrows; it might be his imagination, but the Muntjac's Heartwood seemed to be glowing brighter, like it was being a smug little shit. Well, it had rights now. Probably. "Well, we probably shouldn't let such a thoughtful action be rejected _twice,_ should we?"

Quentin's smile only widened. "No. No, we really shouldn't."

* * *

When Eliot woke up, Quentin was naked and locked in his arms. Every branch in the small cozy room was heavy with peaches now. The scent was heavy in Eliot's nostrils. He might never be able to smell peaches again without feeling like this. Content. _Loved._ Quentin loved him. And oh, the world outside was complicated, and everything was so _fucked_ still, but Eliot's head felt the clearest it had in _weeks._

He felt even better than he had feeding his faux-father to those fucking cannibals.

Quentin made a soft snort as he neared wakefulness. Eliot probably shouldn't find it so adorable. He should find it disgusting. Oh, Ember, Eliot was _so fucking_ gone for Quentin Coldwater. Hm. Eliot waited for that thought to feel like a shock, but there was nothing, not even a hint of surprise at the revelation to be found in his brain.

Quentin blinked awake the same way Eliot remembered; a combination of startled fawn and hurt disbelief, that the world should be so cruel as to require consciousness every single day. Quentin's smile when he saw Eliot looking down at him—sleep-mussed and sex-dizzy—was beautifully shy, considering all they'd done over their decades together, and Eliot had to kiss him again, like a promise.

Eliot was bracing himself for the walk of shame as Quentin gathered some of the peaches, using his tunic as a basket for them, but when they shuffled out the door—Quentin blushing prettily and concentrating on keeping the peaches from falling, probably to avoid Margo's astute gaze—no one noticed them. Even though the room was full.

It was full of people _and_ fruit. More branches were curling through the walls, through the ceiling; plums covered those, fat and rosy. And the Heartwood was glowing, warm and resplendent. Margo was holding court on her favorite seat; Prince Fomar was sat by her side wincing, with what looked like a metal bucket of water perched between his legs; the Stone Queen and her people were loudly celebrating. Even the Fairy Queen was half-grimacing, which Eliot thought might even be a smile.

Apparently Eliot and Quentin weren't the only ones who got lucky last night.

"Oh, sweet," Margo said, finally seeing Quentin, "peaches! _Nice._ " She patted the seat next to her. "Come sit next to me, Guard Quentin. Feed your Queen."

"Uh," Quentin said, and nearly tripped over his own feet to wind through the throng of people to get to Margo's side. She selected a large peach and bit into it, smiling sunnily at Fomar, who winced and shuffled away from her.

Eliot moved closer too, the smell of peaches from Margo making his body stir in a pleasant way; he nudged Quentin aside to sit next to her.

"We're back at the docks, your Majesty," Tick called across the room.

" _Somehow_ after traveling for a week we still managed to find a way to sail back to Fillory in a few hours," the Stone Queen said, looking faintly accusative; she looked like she _knew_ Margo had shafted them somehow, but she couldn't figure out the secret of it. Margo only beamed wider.

"Oh thank Ember and Umber," Fomar yelped, stumbling across the floor to his mother. " _Please_ can we go. I'm a man now. But a man who needs ice." He looked gaunt, haunted. " _So_ much ice. Women from Earth are so _passionate._ "

The Stone Queen eyed Margo nervously; Margo twirled her hair coquettishly.

"Let's take you up to your Castle," the Stone Queen said, hurrying with Fomar to the door, her people close behind. "Thank you for your hospitality, Queen Margo."

"Any-fucking-time," Margo said, way too cheerfully for someone who'd been forced to fuck a minor should be.

The Fairy Queen waited until the Stone Queen and the Not-Floating-Island delegation had gone before announcing, "Take as long again with any of my demands and you won't enjoy it." She glared at Margo, Tick, Quentin, and Eliot for a long moment before disappearing from the ship in a cloud of smoke.

"Neat trick," Tick muttered.

Margo smiled at him. "Tick, make sure every single one of those Not-Floating bastards are off my goddamned ship, would you?"

"Of course, my Queen," Tick said, scurrying off.

As soon as the coast was clear, Eliot stretched out his legs. They were probably still wildly and massively fucked, but it didn't seem so bad in the light of this particular morning. Margo seemed happy. And Quentin… Yeah, Eliot was a goner on that front.

"Nice night, my Queen?" Eliot murmured.

Margo looked around, making sure the Fairy Queen was really gone before her grin widened ferally. "It was a night my hubby will _never_ forget."

"Oh?"

" _Vagina dentata_ , what a wonderful phrase," Margo sang. _"_ Biting eels live in Fillorian waters, remember? And so many nights stuck with the loser means I know how deeply baby sleeps once he's had his bedtime tale. I dived under the covers with it and the poor boy didn't even see it coming; I dropped it overboard out the window while he was busy screaming the cabin down." She glanced at the fruit hanging overhead. "Guess the ship thinks it counts too, huh?"

Eliot opened his mouth to make a noncommittal noise of agreement, until he noticed that Margo was eyeing his neck where a blossoming bruise peeked out; Quentin had a _spectacular_ oral fixation.

"Oh," Eliot said. "Uh." Apparently words were fucking impossible right now. How could he ever put anything he felt about Quentin into words anyway? If he felt less for Quentin, he might be able to say more about it, and, oh god, he wasn't just in love with Quentin Coldwater, he was in _Jane Austen_ levels of love. Fuck. Eliot was never going to regain his reputation as a maneater ever again, was he? He colored as he remembered Quentin's strong arms, holding him down, and as he thought about it happening again, again and again. Yeah, that might not be a problem at all.

Eliot couldn't handle words, but Quentin could.

"I took one for the team," Quentin said. He shrugged at Margo, but his grin _yelled_ sexual satisfaction, and Eliot tried not to puff his chest up proudly at that. Just because he was giving up his mental image of himself as a heartwrecker didn't mean he couldn't continue to be a motherfucking sexual _boss._

"I _bet_ you did," Margo leered, reaching up and catching a plum as it dropped from a branch into her outstretched hand. She bit into it happily. "You know, I actually could get used to this."

Eliot looked from his best friend, happy and finally free of her horrible burden, to her other side, where Quentin was smiling at both of them, and he felt steadier than he ever had before in his life. "I think I know what you mean," he said.


End file.
